My Certifications

How I upgraded my 2500's

Boot ROM's

Cisco gives new Boot ROM's away for free - all you have to pay is the shipping.
So, I called them on 1.800.553.6387 and selected option 3, whereafter I told
them that I wanted to get new Boot ROM's for my 2501 routers. Note that the part number
for a set is BOOT-2500= (last time I ordered some was : 6-28-2001).

They arrived about 10 days later, and it took me less than five minutes to upgrade all
my routers.

One thing you might want to get is a special PLCC tool to remove your old Boot
ROM's, since they can be tough to uninstall with your nail, screwdriver or other things
you could think of using. I got one at Radio Shack.

Flash SIMM memory

The 2500 series has two Flash SIMM slots, and I had a 4 MB Flash SIMM
memory module in the first slot in each router.

To use a Flash SIMM module in both Flash SIMM slots in the router, they must be
identical, so I had to remove my 4 MB SIMM in the first router where the new 8 MB SIMM was
assigned to. This was okay, because the 4 MB SIMM was the same in both routers, so I could
use the one from slot 1 in the first router in slot 2 in the second router, and thereby
have 8 MB Flash memory in both routers.

Now, to make things easier for my self, I had to erase the IOS image from the 4 MB
Flash SIMM I was about to remove, because the second router would not like to have two
identical images in the 8 MB Flash memory.

The way I did that was to save the configuration and the IOS first which is always a
good idea when making changes. Then telling the router to boot up from it's Boot ROM, then
erasing the Flash memory:

These programs are created in Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0, and you will need to
download the MSVBVM60.DLL into
your system folder if you do not already have it.

Also, some Windows installations do no have the MSSTDFMT.DLL, so if you receive
an error message about it, you will need to place it in your system folder, and run regsvr32
c:\windows\system\msstdfmt.dll from a DOS prompt.